One of the tasks that is least liked by restaurant personnel is the making of coffee. The reason for this is that such a chore takes away from tablewaiting time, thereby reducing tip income. During the course of this coffee-making chore, the waiter or waitress must separate a single coffee filter for use in the drip-type coffee-maker. Primarily commercial coffee-maker filters are generally bowl shaped, having a continuous fluted sidewall tapering upwardly and outwardly from a base portion. Such filters are generally about five to eight inches in diameter across the base portion, and are approximately three to five inches in length along the sidewall. Coffee filters of this nature are sold for such home coffee-makers as the Mr. Coffee.RTM. coffee-maker and by Bun-O-Matic Corporation for commercial coffee-makers utilized in restaurants and catering facilities. Generally the filters are compressed into a bundle of about twenty-five units. Several bundles, usually four or six, are stacked together into a plastic bag for sale in the marketplace. It is due to the compression of the individual filters to reduce both shipment and storage space that the filters become difficult to separate one from another. Waiters and waitresses find that much time is lost in their manual attempt to separate one filter from a stack of same. It is necessary generally to utilize only one in order to ensure proper coffee manufacture as the use of a plurality of filters would tend to inhibit the flow of water through the plurality of filters.
Conversation with restaurant personnel indicates that there is no known device to aid the party making coffee to separate but one filter from a stack of compressed coffee filters. A search of the patent literature supports this conclusion.
It is an object of this invention therefore to provide a device to aid a person making coffee to separate one filter from a plurality of filters.
It is another object of this invention to provide a coffee filter picker which can be used to separate one filter from a stack of compressed coffee filters quickly and easily.
It is yet another object of this invention to provide a coffee filter picker which will separate a first filter from a plurality of same without damaging the first filter.
Yet another object is to provide a coffee filter picker that is easy to use and which can be manufactured at a very low price.
Other objects will in part be obvious and others will be readily discernible from a reading of the specification.
For a fuller understanding of the several aspects of the instant invention reference should be had to the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the drawings.